The Danube: a journey upriver from the Black Sea to the Black Forest

By Thorpe, Nick

Publishing Date: [2013], c2013

Classification: 900

Call Number: 914.9604 THO

The magnificent Danube both cuts across and connects central Europe, flowing through and alongside ten countries: Romania, Ukraine, Moldova, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, and Germany. Travelling its full length from east to west, against the river's flow, Nick Thorpe embarks on an inspiring year-long journey that leads to a new perspective on Europe today. Thorpe's account is personal, conversational, funny, immediate, and uniquely observant--everything a reader expects in the best travel writing. Immersing himself in the Danube's waters during daily morning swims, Thorpe likewise becomes immersed in the histories of the lands linked by the river. He observes the river's ecological conditions, some discouraging and others hopeful, and encounters archaeological remains that whisper of human communities sustained by the river over eight millennia. Most fascinating of all are the ordinary and extraordinary people along the way--the ferrymen and fishermen, workers in the fields, shopkeepers, beekeepers, waitresses, smugglers and border policemen, legal and illegal immigrants, and many more. For readers who anticipate their own journeys on the Danube, as well as those who only dream of seeing the great river, this book will be a unique and treasured guide.

Medieval people: vivid lives in a distant landscape : from Charlemagne to Piero della Francesca

By Prestwich, Michael

Publishing Date: 2014

Classification: 900

Call Number: 940.1092 PRE

"This engrossing, exquisitely illustrated, often witty account tells the life stories of some seventy individuals who "made" the Middle Ages. There are kings and queens, popes and politicians, soldiers and merchants, scholars, authors and visionaries. They range from the important, such as El Cid or Frederick Barbarossa, to the little known, such as the dissolute Venetian nun Clara Sanuto. Some were astonishingly successful: the empire created by Chinggis Khan was one of the most extensive ever seen. Some, such as Charles the Bold, the over-ambitious 15th-century duke of Burgundy, were failures. Contrary to modern myth, medieval people did not believe the earth was flat; torture was far less common than in later centuries; and technological advances included guns, printing, blast furnaces, spectacles, stirrups and the compass. Full of insights such as these, this book shows how medieval people lived in an era that was more one of invention and innovation than of superstition and backwardness. It will appeal to all those who want a truer picture of a world often erroneously portrayed by bestselling novelists of today." -- Publisher's description.

A short history of the First World War

By Kerr, Gordon

Publishing Date: 2014

Classification: 900

Call Number: 940.3 KER

WWI, lasting just four years from 1914 to 1918, was without parallel, the first true global conflict in which all of the earth's great powers participated. This book tells the story of this cataclysmic event. It describes the background to war, the international rivalries and conflicts of the previous decades that led to the nations of Europe forming virtual armed camps, the relentless build-up of military and naval hardware that characterized the early years of the 20th century, and the great figures that tried to prevent conflict or enthusiastically pushed for it. Each year of the war is dealt with in its own chapter, the battles, various battlefronts, and important incidents described and analyzed for their impact on the conduct of the war. The book also examines the last acts of this "war to end all wars," providing accounts of the Russian Revolution, the decisive entry of the U.S. into the hostilities, and the efforts of the Paris Peace Conference after the armistice to apportion blame and punish the losers. - (Independent Publishing Group)

Born survivors: three young mothers and their extraordinary story of courage, defiance, and hope

By Holden, Wendy

Publishing Date: 2015

Classification: 900

Call Number: 940.5318 HOL

Among the millions of Holocaust victims sent to Auschwitz II-Birkenau in 1944, Priska, Rachel, and Anka each pass through its infamous gates with a secret. Strangers to one another, they are newly pregnant, and facing an uncertain fate without their husbands. Alone, scared, and with so many loved ones already lost to the Nazis, these young women are privately determined to hold on to all they have left: their lives and those of their unborn babies. That the gas chambers ran out of Zyklon B just after the babies were born, before they and their mothers could be exterminated, is just one of several miracles that allowed them all to survive and rebuild their lives after World War II. Born Survivors follows the mothers' incredible journey--first to Auschwitz, where they each came under the murderous scrutiny of Dr. Josef Mengele; then to a German slave-labor camp, where, half-starved and almost worked to death, they struggled to conceal their condition; and, finally, as the Allies closed in, their hellish seventeen-day train journey with thousands of other prisoners to the Mauthausen death camp in Austria. Biographer Wendy Holden details the courage and kindness of strangers, including guards and civilians, which helped save these women and their children. Sixty-five years later, the three "miracle babies" meet for the first time at Mauthausen for the anniversary of the American liberation. United by their remarkable experiences of survival against all odds, they come to consider each other "siblings of the heart." In Born Survivors, Holden brings all three stories together for the first time, to mark their seventieth birthdays and the seventieth anniversary of the ending of the war. A heart-stopping account of how three mothers and their newborns fought to survive the Holocaust, Born Survivors is also a life-affirming celebration of our capacity to care and love amid inconceivable cruelty.

First SEALs: the untold story of the forging of America's most elite unit

By O'Donnell, Patrick K.

Publishing Date: 2014

Classification: 900

Call Number: 940.54 ODO

"The rich history of SEAL Team 6 that captured Osama bin Laden stretches back to World War II when US intelligence officials formed a team of special-operation combat swimmers. Under the leadership of Captain Jack Taylor, a California dentist, the Maritime Unit (MU) started training in 1942, learning underwater and covert operation techniques, as it developed an array of James Bond-like new equipment, including the recently invented underwater breathing apparatus, limpet mines, silent electric motors, and a collapsible eight-foot submarine. Finally deployed in 1944, the unit conducted some of the most daring, behind-enemy-lines operations of the war in Italy, where they linked up with fearsome Italian commandos. In one of its greatest coups, they captured the plans--and the architect--of Germany's famed Gothic Line, resulting in the Eighth Army's partial breakthrough. Filled with unforgettable characters, including the unit's charismatic leader, a Hollywood star, and a gritty New York City gas station owner, The First SEALs cinematically narrates one of the greatest untold stories of World War II and links their storied past to today's gloried US Navy SEALs"--

Churchill

By Johnson, Paul

Publishing Date: 2009

Classification: 900

Call Number: 941.084 JOH

Acclaimed historian Paul Johnson shows how Churchill's immense adaptability combined with his natural pugnacity to make him a formidable leader for the better part of a century. Rich with anecdote and quotation, Johnson's narrative illustrates the British statesman's humor, resilience, courage, and eccentricity as no other biography before.

The Romanovs: 1613-1918

By Sebag Montefiore, Simon

Publishing Date: 2016

Classification: 900

Call Number: 947.046 SEB

"The acclaimed author of Young Stalin and Jerusalem gives readers an accessible, lively account--based in part on new archival material--of the extraordinary men and women who ruled Russia for three centuries."--NoveList.

NEW RELEASE

October: the story of the Russian Revolution

By Miéville, China

Publishing Date: [2017]

Classification: 900

Call Number: 947.0841 MIE

"Acclaimed fantasy author China Mieville plunges us into the year the world was turned upside down The renowned fantasy and science fiction writer China Mieville has long been inspired by the ideals of the Russian Revolution and here, on the centenary of the revolution, he provides his own distinctive take on its history. In February 1917, in the midst of bloody war, Russia was still an autocratic monarchy: nine months later, it became the first socialist state in world history. How did this unimaginable transformation take place? How was a ravaged and backward country, swept up in a desperately unpopular war, rocked by not one but two revolutions? This is the story of the extraordinary months between those upheavals, in February and October, of the forces and individuals who made 1917 so epochal a year, of their intrigues, negotiations, conflicts and catastrophes. From familiar names like Lenin and Trotsky to their opponents Kornilov and Kerensky; from the byzantine squabbles of urban activists to the remotest villages of a sprawling empire; from the revolutionary railroad Sublime to the ciphers and static of coup by telegram; from grand sweep to forgotten detail. Historians have debated the revolution for a hundred years, its portents and possibilities: the mass of literature can be daunting. But here is a book for those new to the events, told not only in their historical import but in all their passion and drama and strangeness. Because as well as a political event of profound and ongoing consequence, Mieville reveals the Russian Revolution as a breathtaking story"--

Legend: a harrowing story from the Vietnam War of one Green Beret's heroic mission to rescue a Special Forces team caught behind enemy lines

By Blehm, Eric

Publishing Date: [2015]

Classification: 900

Call Number: 959.7 BLE

The author takes as his canvas the Vietnam War, as seen through a single mission that occurred on May 2, 1968. A twelve-man Special Forces team had been covertly inserted into a small clearing in the jungle of neutral Cambodia--where U.S. forces were forbidden to operate. The team did not know they had infiltrated a section of jungle that concealed a major enemy base.

Chief Joseph & the flight of the Nez Perce: the untold story of an American tragedy

By Nerburn, Kent

Publishing Date: c2005

Classification: 900

Call Number: 970.3 NER

The myth of Chief Joseph is exposed, shedding new light on why his life and the surrender of the Nez Perce forever altered America. Chief Joseph is best known for his speech surrendering his tribe to the U.S. government in 1877 after one of the most remarkable military retreats in American history.

George Washington

By Burns, James MacGregor

Publishing Date: 2004

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.41 BUR

Examines the contributions of America's first president, tracing his accomplishments as a Revolutionary War hero and explaining how his decisions as president established precedents for the future governing of America.

John Adams

By Diggins, John P.

Publishing Date: 2003

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.44 DIG

Profiles John Adams as an ideal successor to Washington, citing the qualities of his character and Federalist policies that enabled him to address the challenges that took place during his presidency.

Thomas Jefferson

By Appleby, Joyce Oldham

Publishing Date: 2003

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.46 APP

Few presidents embody the American spirit as fully as Thomas Jefferson. He was possessed of an unrivaled political imagination, and his vision accounts for the almost utopian zeal of his two administrations. Jefferson alone among his American peers anticipated the age of democracy and bent every effort toward hastening its peaceful, consensual arrival. He realized that the spirit of democracy required not only a political revolution, but also a social one. Jefferson, of upper-class birth and upbringing, spent much of his presidency laying out a path through the aristocratic prejudices and pretensions that stood in the way of democracy. The contradictions in his populism are striking and make Jefferson the most controversial of presidents: he spoke of inalienable human rights, but he taught his daughters that women were created for men's pleasure, and he believed that whites and blacks could never coexist peacefully in freedom. Even though his egalitarianism was limited to white men, it represented a sharp break with the outlook and policies of his predecessors. The ideological differences between Jefferson and Federalist presidents George Washington and John Adams led to the establishment of the two-party system that still dominates American politics today.

James Madison

By Wills, Garry

Publishing Date: 2002

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.509 WIL

In this examination of the life of a founding father, renowned historian Wills takes a fresh look at the life of James Madison, from his rise to prominence in the colonies through his role in the creation of the Articles of Confederation and the first Constitutional Congress.

John Quincy Adams

By Remini, Robert V.

Publishing Date: 2002

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.52 REM

Historian Remini presents a vivid portrait of a man whose pre- and post-presidential careers overshadowed his presidency.

The American Civil War: a military history

By Keegan, John

Publishing Date: 2009

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.73 KEE

Analyzes many puzzling aspects of the Civil War, from its mismatched sides to the absence of decisive outcomes for dozens of skirmishes, and offers insight into the war's psychology, ideology, and economics while discussing the pivotal roles of leadership and geography.

The Nixon defense: what he knew and when he knew it

By Dean, John W.

Publishing Date: 2014

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.924 DEA

A former White House Counsel and one of the last surviving major figures from Watergate uses his own transcripts from hundreds of conversations as well as documents in the archives to definitively determine what Nixon knew and when he knew it.

NEW RELEASE

Understanding Trump

By Gingrich, Newt

Publishing Date: 2017

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.933 GIN

A former speaker of the House and Fox News contributor explains why Donald Trump is different from previous presidents and offers advice to the newest commander-in-chief.

NEW RELEASE

Big agenda: President Trump's plan to save America

By Horowitz, David

Publishing Date: [2017]

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.933 HOR

Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 election was more than a historic upset. It was the beginning of a major political, economic, and social revolution that will change America -- and the world. Conservative commentator Horowitz presents a White House battle plan to halt the Democrats' march to extinguish the values conservatives hold dear. He details President Trump's likely moves, and explores the opportunities he will have to reshape the American political landscape while securing the nation's vital security interests abroad.--

NEW RELEASE

Killers of the Flower Moon: the Osage murders and the birth of the FBI

By Grann, David

Publishing Date: [2017]

Classification: 900

Call Number: 976.6004 GRA

Presents a true account of the early twentieth-century murders of dozens of wealthy Osage and law-enforcement officials, citing the contributions and missteps of a fledgling FBI that eventually uncovered one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.